Links for 2022-04-30
Parasites of Parasites: Transposons in the "Rotting Corpse" Flower https://www.quantamagazine.org/dna-of-giant-corpse-flower-parasite-surprises-biologists-20210421/
The brain-reading devices helping paralysed people to move, talk and touch https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01047-w
Cheaper solar cells could be on the way thanks to materials created at Imperial https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/235694/cheaper-solar-cells-could-thanks-materials/
People see people who don’t take sides as deceptive and untrustworthy. “Staying out of it” can damage your reputation as much or even more than disagreeing. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-54630-001
"commercial fishing drove rapid evolutionary change in an Atlantic salmon population over the past 40 years. … selected for later maturation. … main fishing method … captures smaller, younger fish & leaves older, larger fish to spawn" https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abo6512
New data suggest that YouTube may not be an algorithm-fuelled “rabbit hole”, contrary to common belief. More and more of the central concepts from the early days of social media research seem to be conceptually-sophisticated myths rather than hard empirical realities. https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/5/2293/files/2022/04/YouTube.pdf
Do Antidepressants Help? Study Finds They’re Not Associated With Improved Long Term Physical or Mental Health https://scitechdaily.com/do-antidepressants-help-study-finds-theyre-not-associated-with-improved-long-term-physical-or-mental-health/
Road signs showing traffic death counts – intended to reduce accidents – actually seem to increase them. Why? They distract drivers. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm3427
Contra Hoffman On Vitamin D Dosing https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-hoffman-on-vitamin-d-dosing?s=r
“Bootstrapped meta-learning”, proposes an algorithm that enables an agent to learn how to learn by teaching itself https://openreview.net/forum?id=b-ny3x071E5
Moral Uncertainty and Why We Should Care About Existential Risk https://outoftheordinary.substack.com/p/the-case-for-longtermism-from-moral?s=w
It could be interesting to have @metaculus predictions on when annual hot deaths will exceed cold deaths in various regions.